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0 pointsCharlesColeman6y ago0 comments

>> the "hate," if it can even be called that, is for the Chinese government and the CCP.

> You may only hate the government...

Hate is actually not a very good word to describe the situation, IMHO. I only used it because the GP did, but I quoted and questioned the choice. If I had to describe it, I would say it's moral disapproval coupled with a recognition of incompatible goals that requires some kind of response.

> You may only hate the government, but you should be aware that many of those who seem to be on your side criticising the CPC do in fact hate everything Chinese.

I find that a bit hard to square with the support of Chinese things by the same group, like the Tiananmen Square and Hong Kong protests (for instance). I don't doubt that there exist people who are racist against Chinese people, but I think the overlap with HN is small, and definitely small enough that it's a derail to bring up on a vague prompt like in the parent of this subthread.

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yorwba6y ago

> I find that a bit hard to square with the support of Chinese things by the same group, like the Tiananmen Square and Hong Kong protests (for instance).

I can only guess, but it could be explained by mentally categorizing Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and even Tiananmen protesters as "not Chinese." I don't think it's so much racism as a binary "us vs. them" classification system that expresses itself as the opinion that "the Chinese" should be punished for oppressing <some group> by implementing <some policy>, where <some policy> is not specific to oppressors and would also affect <some group>. I'm sure it's often just said in the heat of the moment and not to be taken literally, but it still poisons the discourse.

> it's a derail to bring up on a vague prompt like in the parent of this subthread.

Agreed, but since the thread was already derailed I decided to respond anyway.

CharlesColemanOP6y ago

> I can only guess, but it could be explained by mentally categorizing Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and even Tiananmen protesters as "not Chinese." I don't think it's so much racism as a binary "us vs. them" classification system that expresses itself as the opinion that "the Chinese" should be punished for oppressing <some group>...

That could be in some cases, though what you're describing sounds more like a government leaders/enforcers vs. liberals/oppressed minorities classification (which also leaves a big gray area). The people sympathize and feel allied to the latter group, so the "us" includes a lot of Chinese people, so it's not so much Chinese vs not-Chinese.

I think I've seen similar comments, but I usually interpreted it as a mess of lazy or imprecise language, because often the complaints could only apply to a narrow group even though the person is using some broad term like "China" or "Chinese."

yorwba6y ago

> "us" includes a lot of Chinese people, so it's not so much Chinese vs not-Chinese.

I fear not everyone realizes that on an intuitive level. People see a bunch of vocal Chinese nationalists repeating government propaganda and get the impression that this is representative of the average Chinese person, leading them to demand that Chinese users be banned from social media, or Chinese students have their visas denied, or whatever measure would solve the issue at hand while simultaneously excluding the Chinese part of "us."

It's maybe a question of defaults, where the knowledge that something is Chinese leads to the suspicion that it must be bad, unless some redeeming quality (such as being anti-government) can be found.

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yorwba6y ago

> I find that a bit hard to square with the support of Chinese things by the same group, like the Tiananmen Square and Hong Kong protests (for instance).

> it's a derail to bring up on a vague prompt like in the parent of this subthread.

Agreed, but since the thread was already derailed I decided to respond anyway.

CharlesColemanOP6y ago

yorwba6y ago

> "us" includes a lot of Chinese people, so it's not so much Chinese vs not-Chinese.

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